Saturday, May 24, 2014

If you are an online entrepreneur, freelancer, or anything related to online world then you already know how difficult and competitive the industry is. This is one of the industries where location and certificate don’t play a vital role. This is the big industry. It doesn’t matter how small the services you are providing as an entrepreneur or freelancer but the true fact is you are competing with the whole world. So Self-confidence is really important to be a successful professional. No one will believe you unless you believe in yourself first. So the first thing where you have to work out is improving self-confidence. You need to create a feeling in your mind that Yes I can do it. Yes I can learn new stuff. I can raise myself to the next level. And if you can increase your self-confidence then I can guarantee you that you will find your next journey smoother than ever. Now the question is “How to Increase Self Confidence?” To answer this question below I am going to share few important ways I have learnt in my journey.

1-Repetition and Persistence

Can you still remember how you learnt to write A, B, C, D. Let me remind, it was repetition. All of us didn’t know how to write it. If we can see our first attempt at writing the letter “A” I am pretty sure most of our trials were in no way close to A. But our parents didn’t give up on us. They requested, forced, and motivated us to try again and again. And by this repeated trials we really learnt how to write A B C D.

This is what exactly works for a professional career. No one can complete their entire task at first attempt. But when you will be preparing for repeated attempts then you will be able to see some sort of improvement with every try. You will be able to persist. With every try and every improvement your confidence level will increase, and you can feel that yes I can do it.

2-Follow the Niche Leader

Success can be defined by the sum of improvements. If we look on a successful Entrepreneur we can be happy by seeing their success, or even be envious of their achievements. But we forget to focus on the most important part “How they did it.” We got a person who did the great thing, so it makes the path easier than before, because there is someone who can be followed. So try to figure out what he has done, what he is doing, and what kind of future plan he has. It will not only give you an idea it will also make your path smother. You can make a short list of things to follow and things to avoid. And this short list and their success will increase your confidence that you can do it too. I am not a big professional to follow but here is a presentation I had created about how I converted my freelancing career to an entrepreneurship.

3-Self Talk

What do you do when you have nothing to do? Or what do you think when you are brushing your teeth, looking in mirror, sitting behind windows? You can convert those free times into a self confidence booster. When you are free you can be more productive. Start self-motivating yourself during these free moments. Start saying out loud what you want to do and what you want to be. Say to yourself “I am the best, Yes I can do it”. If he can do it then I will do it too. If you want to increase your self-confidence you need to remind yourself about your goal. Self-talking can be the best way to create faith in your abilities.

4-Setting Milestones

Dream big but create a set of shorter milestones. If you want to be a developer what kind of things will you need to learn?

HTML

PHP

MySQL

Basic and advance facts of various CMS

How Linux or windows hosting server works

How DNS works

SEO Facts

etc etc etc and so on……………………

So it is a clear indication that you are not going to be a developer within one or two days or even in just a couple of months. But if you feel that things are too complicated then you can be frustrated. You will say “oh shame! I have been trying hard to be a developer for the last few months but still I was unable to complete any project or even earn any money. ” and that will be the start of losing hope. But if you create a set of milestones, like at first I will learn html, then PHP, then MySQL. Then start learning HTML. Then after a month or two you can say yes I learnt about html now time to move on PHP. By just changing your thoughts you can feel more confident and find the journey enjoyable even though you are doing the same thing. It will not only increase your confidence but will also speed up your effort. It will give you enough satisfaction. So remember you can always have the option to think of the same thing either from a negative and affirmative perspective. But go with affirmative thinking, it will really help you to build your career.

5-Motivational Video and Quote

On earth, each and every one is living with lots of problems. You and I cannot run away from it. Lots of social, economic and physical problems are there to disturb us. At the same time we can’t expect that we will not do any mistake.

So with these problems it is very natural and common scenario for us to be frustrated. We can start losing our hope. We can start to feel that we can’t do it. But when we can see that there are some people who have turned the impossible into possible. Who were able to complete the race and win. Then it will put light on our almost dead dream and build our confidence. This is where motivational video works. It will always remind you that nothing is impossible. There were always few people who fight against problems and you can join their team or something bigger than them.

“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”

I still read or memorize the above quote from Theodore Roosevelt specially when I do any mistake and feel frustrated. And this quote plays like a tonic for me to charge up again.

6-Interview

Watching Interviews is a million dollar habit. When you are watching a tutorial or reading a blog post, remember you are only viewing the text or listening to the words the presenter wants to present. But in an interview you can hear what the audience/interview taker wants to hear. So by watching interviews you can discover some unshared tips which can change your overall success rate. It also helps you to be motivated. To know more about the possible problems and solutions you can face. So watching or reading interviews can be a big way to improve your confidence level.

7- Do Not Accept No

Do not accept no, yes I meant it. When you accept No, at that moment you are killing your dream. You should always have positive thinking. Just think, your child wants to participate in a quiz competition. You are the parent and at the moment he informed you about the competition you are saying you can’t do it? What will happen? He will lose the speed, spirit, and confidence. It will create a negative effect on their overall preparation. But if you said, oh that’s great; I know you will win it. Then what would happen? He would feel very happy and inspired. So again if you don’t believe in yourself then how can you dream to win the race? If you have a dream then believe yes I can.

I am almost at the end of today’s blog post. Before closing the blog post here is what I want to mention again.

Don’t think about the odds, difficulty and adversity of a task. Just believe in yourself. Just believe that you can accomplish it.

Lastly,

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!

If you know any more ways to increase self-confidence then please share with us through the comment section and subscribe to my mailing list below to get Free Email Updates.

- See more at: http://www.nahidhasan.com/how-to-increase-self-confidence/#more-382

“An awesome piece of content doesn’t rank well because it has a lot of Facebook likes, it ranks well because it’s awesome, and in turn it gets shared on Facebook a lot because it’s awesome.”

This is what Matt Cutts said in a video he uploaded on 22 January 2014, and he added that social media shares don’t have any SEO value. You can read this post here.

Now Let’s go back in time to 2010, when Matt Cutts said:

“I filmed a video back in May 2010 where I said that we didn’t use “social” as a signal, and at the time, we did not use that as a signal, but now, we’re taping this in December 2010, and we are using that as a signal.”

So things may seem a little confusing. Ok, let me show a few more statements from several other experts:

“According to Sam McRoberts, CEO of Vudu Marketing, the number of reviews and the positivity of those reviews are two of the three biggest factors in local search rankings (primarily Google places listing). If that’s the case, then it’s not a stretch to believe that Google uses that information in its national rankings as well.”

Lets Move on Next Part

Danny Sullivan to Google and Bing

Q:Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?

Bing:

Yes.

Google:

Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of Page Rank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.

So It can be said that yes, both search engines have some connection with those social shares and engagement, but it is not clear whether that directly affects any Ranking Factors.

Google and Bing both can crawl only the facebook stories that are posted as public. This is what Google says when Danny Sullivan asked about it:

Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?

Ans from Google: We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

Now let us move on to other parts

In 2012, I can still remember reading a blog post from Neil Patel where he showed the connection between Google rankings and the tweets a post has.

Now if we go with Matt Cutts’ statement then it can be debatable whether the post has such a high amount of tweets because it ranks on first page. Similarly, it is debatable whether it ranks on the first page because it has such amount of tweets. This scenario reminds me of the question “Who came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Ok leave this part unsolved for now and let me show you how Social Shares and Engagements can help you on some Google factors.

Different Search Result for Login and Logged Out User:

Google Plus is the Second Largest Social Networking Site in the world. However, it is more like a social layer than a social networking site. In fact, it is more of an authorship tool. Google plus has almost everything a social networking site has but that is not at all. It has a good connection with Google search results. If you are a regular Google plus user, then staying logged in to your account may have some great benefits. For instance, if you have +1 on any of your posts, or you are following any pages and communities, or any of the members of your circle is sharing any content or writing a post on Google plus, then it can be visible on Google’s search result if you stay sign in to Google plus or Gmail while you are searching.

Google Plus Post Result on Search Engine

Can you imagine your Google plus post, or a post from your brand page appearing on top of a Google search result page? Yes it happens, and this is one of the reasons why Google plus is getting so much attention from all kinds of professionals.

Dofollow Links:

We all know that dofollow links are those links that passes SEO juice. Have you ever checked on whether the link you share on Google plus is dofollow or nofollow? It is dofollow. Therefore, it can be a strong point to believe that Google gives SEO priority to Google Plus Shares. Nonetheless, it is still unclear whether the same happens for other social media sites.

Ensure Repeated Visitor

Do you just create one post/ one product for your customers? The customers who bought a camera from you can buy other similar or different products from you. Thus, to sell more you need to create a good rapport with your customers for repeated sales or visits.

At the time I am writing this post (14th February, 2014), Search Engine Journal has published 5 blog posts on their blog. The seed topics were SEO, Facebook, Google, and a couple more. I read three of them yet I was not searching for any post or information related to their posts. I got those posts on my Google plus and Facebook feeds and I found them interesting and useful and read them. Therefore, from their point of view, I was their repeat visitor and one fantastic way of attracting repeat visitors is by strategically using social shares. Hence, this is one area where you can have an advantage and attract repeated crowds to your website as well gain more authority. More authority means greater possibilities of gaining search engine advantages.

Reduce Bounce Rate

Before 2013, people had no way of thinking about website bounce rates in term of SEO. Now, bounce rates is a major issues. Still, there is no clear evidence about any direct connection between bounce rate and search engine ranks, but most SEO professionals believe that bounce rate is important for SEO ranks. Google always points out that you need to create valuable content so you can fulfill the needs of your visitor. Moreover, if you can create valuable content then you can expect repeated visitors.

Therefore, we can say repeated visitors are those visitors who like your site and content and they come to your site more than your new visitors do. They love to read more posts or also love to engage with you. Thus, all of these things will increase your site visit time, will increase quantity of visitors to that page, and will reduce the bounce rate. Hence, bounce rate can be one of the signals of your visitors’ satisfaction.

So as I mention that Social Shares can help you to get repeated visitors and you can expect less bounce rates from such traffic.

Increase Brand Visibility and Co citation

When I am talking about Co citation the biggest example I should give is Open Site Explorer. One of the keyword it has ranked is Link Analysis Software. Yet the phrase appears nowhere in the website and even if you do a backlink analysis, you will not get enough anchor text with the phrase. Nevertheless, it still ranks number 1 for this keyword. This happens due to the power of cogitation. (The words present around the anchortext).

Rand Fish kin created an awesome video about cogitation which you can view to get a better idea about what it is and how it works.

Therefore, by being more active on social media or by getting more social media shares we can say that it will increase your brand visibility and also cogitation which may affect your Google ranking.

There are lots more advantages you can get if your site has good social shares but I am not going to write about that for this post. I simply wanted to point out those advantages that directly affect your SEO strategy. The lessons I have learnt are that:

Google doesn’t directly calculate the social signals for SEO ranking but still it has big influence on SEO

Google plus Shares has some direct influence on SEO ranking.

Social Shares may give some signal to Google especially for local search results.

Google Places Reviews has great influence on Google Local Search Result.

Google Can Only Access information shared as public.

Finally, I have not written anything about Google authorship, but Google will give credit on any topic by seeing who is sharing the content.

If you feel that I have missed some part or if you have a different view than mine then it will be great to discuss it through the comment section.

- See more at: http://www.nahidhasan.com/does-social-media-help-to-increase-search-engine-rank/#more-431

Search Engines are the main source of targeted web traffic, no doubt. That is why each and every business needs a search engine optimizer. As a result, the number of total search engine optimizers is increasing. In USA, the number of search engine optimizers is 363,857, and the worldwide number might be 1.7x larger (According to Moz).

Among the list of SEO professionals, a large number of them work as freelancers on various freelancing market places. They either act as consultants, link builders, or other specific parts of SEO.

Below are figures of the approximate number of SEO professionals in the top two online market places. (Based on their profile tags, the actual number could be less or higher)

Odesk =117,988

Elance = 14,421

I am very happy to say I am one of them. But I did not stay long as a full time freelancer, even though I believe freelancing can be a great source of income or funding, but one should have bigger dreams than freelancing. A couple of weeks ago I uploaded a presentation on slideshare, you can view it to get an idea how I moved towards business from freelancing.

There are lots of advance factors which might not be so clear for every SEO professional but they should have an idea about their strength and they should know how to rank a website within the capable competition. If so, then the freelancer is ready to start his own business.

1-Create an SEO Firm:

I was a fulltime freelancer and doing well. I had lots of clients and a good earning, but then I realized that alone I can’t handle too many clients and can’t work on too many projects. because I can’t take on more load than my capability. This is true for everyone. Then I thought about expansion. I thought I need to create a business and I realize an SEO firm could be the best choice to start. This is because it would be easiest and cost saving and also closely related to what I was doing at that time.

So you can think the same way I had thought at that time.

What you need?

You need a few more professionals to support you. Or you can create few more professional by yourself that is what I did at the beginning of my business journey. Now we serve a complete Online Marketing Solution with web developments services and by the end of the year we are going to add more services to ensure our clients’ satisfaction. You can learn more about my firm on our website.

2-Create a Tool:

Each and every business depends on various tools, either for business operation or for business security. So almost every sector you have an opportunity to create a tool. Even you can focus on an SEO tool as well. I know this is not an easy task to create a tool because you need a developer, which is costly. It needs a good amount of investment which can create confusion on your mind about the return. But if you can really create a high demand, unique, and quality tool then it will be a huge source of earning. As an SEO professional you have chance to save or reduce SEO cost.

Another big advantage of a tool is it converts the way you work. For example, if you are a banner designer what do you need to do? You need to create banners manually for all of your clients, and you can’t create banner for two clients at a time. But if you can create a banner maker tool which is capable of producing 1000’s of banner each minute you can operate with a big smile since you don’t need to involve yourself manually in each job. So this is another reason to focus on a tool to start your new journey. Here is a banner making tool you can check and try.

3-Affiliate Marketing

You may not have any tool to promote or have an SEO firm to provide services, but you can still earn a lot through these two sources, yes it is true. There are lots of tools, products, services already present in the market and they are doing a great job. Their quality is already ensured. You just need to express it to your audiences and can earn the affiliate commission if purchases happen through your promotion.

This is the one of the biggest sources of earning. Most bloggers and online entrepreneurs earn through affiliate marketing, and I am one of them.

4-Training Institute

You have done a great job and learned a lot of things, now it could be your turn to teach others. This could be a great source of income. You can create a fulltime training institute or even create seasonal campaigns to transfer your acquired knowledge and teach your own expertise. There are a few training institutes available in Bangladesh as well such as Xponent Academy, DevsTeam Institute, and Masqara just to mention a few. So after a certain period acquiring the desired skills and experience you can think about starting a training institute which can be your next source of income.

5-Earning from AdSense or Similar Sources

This is another big source of income; most bloggers either depend directly on AdSense earnings or count AdSense as a great source of income beside other monetizing options. I suggest you start with one or two micro niche websites, because at the beginning it is always better to take on less load, which will help you to keep your confidence and help to be organized and stable.

6-Write an Ebook and Sell

I am one of those people who feel creating a training institute beside the service providing firm is very difficult. It needs lots of time, money, and patience. That reduced my interest in running a training institute, though it is a great source of income for a growing industry. So if you feel like me then you have another option to sell your expertise and this is by writing a book. You can write an ebook about your experiences and include highly valuable tips to make the path smoother for the new comer. And by selling the book you can create a great income stream.

If you feel I forgot to mention any important parts then please share it through the comment section. Your views will really help my readers and please share it to your social network if you really like my post.

- See more at: http://www.nahidhasan.com/6-things-an-seo-freelancer-can-do/#more-283